


How Bumblebee Met Sparkplug

by DanielAdkins



Series: Primax 916.26 Omega [2]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Bromance, Epsilon Ariadne, Friendship, Gen, One Shot, gratuitous references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-22
Updated: 2017-10-22
Packaged: 2019-01-21 03:22:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12448632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DanielAdkins/pseuds/DanielAdkins
Summary: After crash landing on a strange, mysterious planet, an Autobot scout makes an unlikely friend. This is the beginning of a universe-defying friendship.





	How Bumblebee Met Sparkplug

_Alright, Bee, stay cool. You’ve been through the Infiltration protocol process. You know what to do in this situation._

That’s when Bumblebee realized something – he DIDN’T know what to do in this situation. He just stood there, frozen, with his internal processor panicking. Here he was, already screwing up on his very first mission to an alien planet. Well, “mission” wasn’t quite the right word for it. “Marooning” would be more accurate. After taking on an alternate mode based on a planetary vehicle, he had maintained his cover, trying to contact Cybertron or any passing Autobot ships. He had stayed well hidden, easily ingratiated into the local population, and planned to send another message out tonight without being detected.

But Bumblebee was wrong. He got sloppy and had let a native discover him while in robot mode. He could only imagine what the other bots back on Cybertron would say.

Hot Rod would have another thing to tease. “Nice going, Bumbler.”

Ironhide would be disappointed. “Kid, I taught you to be smarter than this.”

Prowl would be proven right. “I knew you weren’t ready for field work.”

Still, Bumblebee knew he had to do something. He couldn’t just sit here, outside this native shelter looking like a cervidon-in-the-headlights while the native who discovered his presence just stood there in shock. Based on his scouting, Bumblebee determined that this planet, “Earth,” and its primary inhabitants, “humans,” were highly underdeveloped, technologically speaking. Very few, if any, of their number had ever encountered non-terrestrial life, let alone non-organic life like Cybertronians. As such, he imagined the human in front of him, an adolescent male, was just as shocked and scared as he was.

The way Bumblebee looked at it, he had two options: either he could retreat and risk the human relaying his presence to more of its kind, or he could engage the human and try to minimize his impact on this planet. Normally, engagement with natives was highly forbidden, but that bridge had already been crossed. So Bumblebee made his choice.

“Hi.”

The native did not take this kindly, screaming and backing into the opening of his shelter, which Bumblebee had earlier exited.

_I knew I should have used that universal greeting Kup taught me._

He reached for what appeared to be a weapon of some kind: a long wooden club. He raised the weapon in his hands, keeping it between himself and the Autobot. From what Bumblebee had been able to study about humans, they had a fight or flight response to danger. This one was clearly a fighter.

“Woah, woah, calm down. I’m-”

“Stay back! Stay back, you hear?” The human kept the club-like object raised and pointed at Bee, poking the space in front of him.

“I mean you no harm.”

“I said STAY BACK!” the human yelled. Bumblebee took a step back and raised his hands, trying to show the human that he posed no threat.

“Ok. I’m staying back. This is me, staying back.” The human kept his guard, but appeared as though he was beginning to calm down.

“Alright, you big… robot… thing,” the human said, “I don’t know what the hell you are or where you came from. I just want to know one thing: where’s my ride?”

Bumblebee was confused by this inquiry. “Uh, your ‘ride?’” he asked.

“Yeah, my ride. The yellow ’73 Bug I just brought home from the impound lot that, last I checked, was in my garage not five hours ago?”

_Bug?_ Bumblebee thought for a second. _I didn’t see any small insectoids- Wait. Does he mean my alt-mode?_

“Um… I’m afraid I have some news for you.” Bumblebee pointed down to his feet, which formed the front end of his alternate form. The human reached into a pocket on his lower garments, fishing out a tiny light. He shone the light where the robot pointed. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

“Y-You ARE my car?”

“I’m afraid so.” The human just stood there, staring in disbelief. Finally, he looked up at Bee’s face.

“What… what are you? Some kind of military robot?”

“Well, I guess I kind of am, but-”

“Oh man! I need to call the police or something.” The human turned to head back inside.

“NO!” Bumblebee crouched down to get closer to the human. In response, the human turned around and raised his weapon once more. “I’m sorry, but I can’t let you call anyone. No one on this planet can know that I’m here.”

“This planet? What are you, an alien or something?”

“Well… yeah.”

“Wait…” the human took a step back. “Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

He dropped his weapon. “Oh man. Oh no. Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no. No! This can’t be happening! I cannot be sitting here, in the middle of the night, talking to my car which is also some sort of… alien robot, apparently?” By this time, the young man had begun pacing around the street.

“Honestly, if you ask me, you’re taking this a lot better than I thought someone of your species would.” Bumblebee laughed at this remark. The human was less than amused.

“Shut up! You better tell me what’s going on right now or so help me–”

“STAN!” A voice called out from inside the home. Both Bumblebee and the human turned to look at the door as an adult female, much older than the adolescent, wearing a small pink garment that covered most of her torso, opened the door. This time, Bumblebee knew exactly what to do.

“Mom!” the human said.

“What do you think you’re doing, Stanislas?” the mother asked. “It’s two o’clock in the morning.”

“Mom, I can explain…” Stanislas tried to figure out the words to describe the extraterrestrial machine behind him. Luckily, he didn’t have to.

“Were you working on the car tonight?”

Confused as to why she wasn’t making a bigger deal of the giant robot, Stan turned around, expecting to see the yellow automaton. Instead, all he saw was a 1973 Volkswagen Beetle, just like the one he brought home that morning.

Stan answered his mother’s inquiry. “Uh… maybe?”

“At this hour?” His mother crossed her arms in frustration.

“Um, yeah. I was just tuning it up. Maybe gonna go for a test drive… get something from Burger House?”

“Honey, I’m glad you’re taking the initiative with this car, but do you think you could do that in the morning? And I mean in the actual morning.”

“Aw come on, Ma. Just let me take him – _it_ – out, will ya? One drive around the block is all I’m asking.” The human mother folded her arms and rolled her optics.

“Boys and their cars,” she muttered to herself. “Fine. But I expect you to be back at this house, in your bed, in the next thirty minutes.”

“Aye, aye, Major,” Stan saluted as his mother went back inside. As soon as the door was close again, he breathed a sigh of relief.

“Man,” he sighed, “that was a close one.” The windows of the Beetle rolled down and a familiar voice came over the radio.

“You’re telling me,” the radio said. Stan jumped back at this sudden sound.

“GAH!”

“What?” Bumblebee asked, still in vehicle mode.

“Don’t do that! I’m having a hard-enough time accepting that my car is some kind of shapeshifting robot alien. The last thing I need is the radio talking to me.”

“Oh, quit your whining.”

“Whining?” Stan leaned into the window to address the radio. “Look, I think you owe me an explanation. Just what the hell are you, where the hell do you come from, and what in the hell are you doing here?”

“Alright, fair enough.” Bumblebee opened his driver side door. “Still wanna go for that drive?”

* * *

Needless to say, Stan did not make it back home in thirty minutes. He drove – well, really it was Bumblebee doing all the driving, but Stan directed him where to go – out to the outskirts of his community, down to a small cliff side near Mount St. Hillary, where the two could talk, face to face. And talk they did.

Bumblebee answered every question the young human had. He told him about his home planet of Cybertron, where an entire race of mechanical beings lived. He told him how his kind were called “Transformers” by other races because of their innate ability to change between two forms, and how Transformers used this ability to hide on other planets by taking the form of local machines. He told him about the war between two factions, the peace-loving Autobots and the war-mongering Decepticons, and how it had, after thousands of years of battle, ravaged the planet and begun to entrench the entire galaxy. He told him about how he was an Autobot scout, stranded here on this planet after his ship crashed, desperate to get any signal out to his fellow Autobots throughout space and back on Cybertron.

“So that’s where you were going when I found you,” Stan remarked as Bumblebee finished his story. “You were trying to get a signal out to your commanding officers.”

“Yeah. Unfortunately, my communications systems weren’t designed for long-range and can only reach so far. I’ve been trying to find a location that can carry the signal further. I figure even if I can’t get a message all the way back to Cybertron, hopefully an Autobot ship will receive it and provide me with a rescue.”

“You said you came here in a ship, right”

“A shuttle, not a ship. Bit of a difference.”

“Doesn’t your shuttle have a communication system you could use?”

“It did. Before it got totaled in the crash,” Bumblebee looked down, visibly hurt at the loss of his shuttle. “I could barely even salvage anything.”

Stan could see the loss Bumblebee felt.

“So what would your ship be called?” Bumblebee looked at him, puzzled. Stan clarified, “Your ship. If you ever got to captain one, what would it be called?” Bumblebee took a second to think. He hadn’t really considered the possibility before. But in an instant, the perfect name came to him.

“ _Orion_. After one of my mentors.” Bumblebee smiled as he reflected on his mentor.

“Well whoever this “Orion” is, he must be pretty important to you.”

“He’s important to all of us. He’s one of the greatest leaders Cybertron has ever known.”

Stan was happy to see Bumblebee cheer up. But still, one question lingered in his mind.

 “What were you doing near Earth in the first place?”

“Trust me, it wasn’t my plan to crash here. I was on a routine scouting mission to Epsilon Ariadne when a spacebridge accident shunted me to this solar system and short-circuited my shuttle’s controls. Even I’m not entirely sure what caused it.”

“Well whatever it is, don’t worry. I’m sure your team will be here soon. In the meantime, we should probably be getting back home. Lord knows what will happen when Mom sees I’m not back yet.”

“We?”

“Of course, ‘we.’”

“But Infiltration protocol clearly states-”

“Look, you need a place to lay low until the cavalry arrives to pick you up. And there’s no place lower than Oregon. Consider it a scouting mission.”

“A scouting mission?”

“Besides, if you think I’m gonna just let you drive away with the car I just bought, you’re sadly mistaken. I paid for you fair and square. In fact, in a way, I’m your new owner.”

Stan looked up at the Autobot with a smug look on his face. Bumblebee merely gave a chuckle at the human ordering him around. He transformed into car mode, opening the driver door.

“If you insist, Stanislas,” Bumblebee’s voice came over the radio.

“Hey!” Stan said as he got in the car. “Don’t call me that. Only my mother gets the call me ‘Stanislas.’ All my friends call me Sparkplug. Sparkplug Witwicky.”

“Sparkplug, huh? Sounds Cybertronian.”

“Well, clearly Cybertronians have good sense in names. What about you?”

“Me?”

“Yeah. What’s your name? We’ve talked all night and I still don’t know what to call you. I can’t just keep calling you ‘robot,’ now can I? Seems kinda offensive.”

“Bumblebee. You can call me Bumblebee.”

“Well, ‘Bee. I think this is the start of a beautiful friendship.”


End file.
